Environmental Studies Major Jeffery Sullivan Earns $5,000 Udall Foundation Scholarship

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College student Jeffery D. Sullivan, class of 2014, has been awarded an Undergraduate Scholarship from the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Foundation. Sullivan was named one of just 80 recipients of the $5,000 prize, which is awarded annually to students committed to careers related to the environment or Native American affairs. An added perk to the scholarship will be the opportunity for Sullivan to meet elected officials and environmental and Native American tribal leaders at the four-day Udall Scholars Orientation in Tucson, Arizona this coming August.

Sullivan’s interest in the environment is what led him to choose Washington College after graduating from Lake Forest High School in Felton, Delaware. An environmental studies major, he participated in the College’s unique Chesapeake Semester program (http://chesapeake-semester.washcoll.edu/) in the fall of 2011. The program combines fieldwork, intensive study and outdoor adventure throughout the 64,000 square mile watershed of the Bay and ends with a journey to Peru to compare the cultural, economic and political forces at work in each region.

“The Chesapeake Semester was an incredible experience, better even than I hoped it would be,” Sullivan says. “It brings together a lot of aspects of environmental work that are often disconnected, bringing all the stakeholders together to look at the issues that affect the health of the Bay.”

Sullivan, the Finn M. W. Caspersen Scholar, is involved in a wide range of campus activities. He came to the College as a Presidential Fellow and is now a member of the Cater Society. In his freshman year, he became a parliamentarian for the Student Government Association, and he will be a Residential Advisor for the Presidential Fellows in Kent House for the 2012-2013 academic year.

As a member of the Student Environmental Alliance, he recently teamed up with a fellow student to start a Bike Share program on campus. This summer, he will intern in the College’s Chester River Field Research Center at Chino Farms, where he will band migratory birds and conduct research on songbirds.

The Udall Scholarship will significantly benefit Sullivan and his career goals. “I am very pleased to receive this scholarship, not only for the recognition and the financial assistance, but also for the opportunity the conference will bring,” he says. “I’ll be able to explore environmental careers and network with legislators and EPA officials, as well as with other students interested in environmental studies.”

The Udall Scholarship Foundation was created in 1992 to honor Congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother Stewart and their legacy of public service. The foundation awards roughly 80 scholarships of up to $5,000 and 50 honorable mentions of $350 to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue careers in environmental public policy and to Native American and Alaska Native undergraduate students who intend to pursue careers in health care and tribal public policy.

Washington College English Professor Rich Gillin Is Recognized as One of America’s Very Best

CHESTERTOWN, MD—A just-released publication from The Princeton Review includes news that students and alumni of Washington College have known for decades—that Richard Gillin is one of the best professors in the country. The 38-year veteran of the English faculty is among those celebrated in The Best 300 Professors (Random House/Princeton Review, $19.99), released today in bookstores and online. “In shaping individuals to become critical thinkers in both his and other disciplines,” the guide says, “Professor Gillin teaches his students to draw insights from English literature that can be useful in their lives.”

The Princeton Review teamed up with the popular ratings site RateMyProfessors.com to develop the list of top teachers, who hail from 122 colleges and universities. The results put Gillin in very good company, indeed. From the initial list of 42,000 professors who were considered, the final group of “best” professors constitutes less than .02 percent of the roughly 1.8 million post-secondary teachers instructing students at colleges and universities across the U.S.

“Rich Gillin really does set the bar for the kind of teaching we value and support at Washington College,” President Mitchell B. Reiss said upon hearing of the honor. “This recognition could not be more deserved.”

Gillin came to the Chestertown campus in 1973 after earning an undergraduate degree from William Paterson College, a master’s from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from Bowling Green University. As the Ernest A. Howard Professor of English Literature and the Director of the Humanities Program at Washington College, he teaches 18th and 19th century English literature, with a special interest in Romanticism and the English-language literature of post-colonial India and the Caribbean. In addition, he directs the Kiplin Hall Summer Program, a three-week residential course on Literature and Landscape based at a 17th century estate in England.

Students quoted in the guide describe Gillin as “extremely helpful and flexible,” and “the best English professor and kindest soul you’ll ever meet.” They say he “validates, encourages, and inspires,” and is “a model for educators … a man for the Ivory Tower as well as the struggling student.”

Gillin’s colleague Kathryn Moncrief, chair of the English Department, agrees with their assessment. “Rich’s intelligence, generosity, and integrity exemplify the very best of Washington College. He inspires students with his knowledge and love of literature, challenges them to think deeply about and get engaged by what they've read, and guides them as they become better writers,” she says. “He’s known by students as a professor who is both rigorous and kind, someone whose courses are ‘must-takes’ for English majors. And those who accompany him to Kiplin Hall in England to read poetry and hike where Wordsworth and Coleridge did, return utterly transformed.”

Gillin modestly says his first response on hearing of the honor was to “make sure they had the right guy.” He praises the College for what he describes as a nurturing attitude toward good teaching and helping professors expand their own horizons. “They have encouraged me to pursue my interests in the literary world and let me teach without a lot of distractions.” He also has good things to say about his students and their willingness to take on tough new areas of study. “There really is a good-natured quality and intellectual openness among Washington College students,” he says. “They are willing to study areas of literature that are not widely popular or easily accessible.”

Princeton Review publisher Robert Franek says The Best 300 Professors is a tribute to the extraordinary dedication of America's best undergraduate college professors “and the vitally important role they play in our culture, and our democracy. We are truly pleased to recommend them—and the schools at which they teach—to college applicants and their parents who use our resources,” he adds.

The Best 300 Professors is one of nearly 150 Princeton Review books published by Random House. Its flagship guide, The Best 376 Colleges, included Washington College in the 2012 edition, which featured just 15 percent of the nation's colleges and universities. To see the complete lists of the “Best 300 Professors,” visit www.princetonreview.com/best-professors.aspx.

Head of European Paintings at Metropolitan Museum to Explore Bellini's Painting of St. Francis

CHESTERTOWN, MD—One of the world’s leading experts on Italian Renaissance painting will elucidate one of the period’s masterpieces when he delivers the ninth annual Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History at Washington College on Thursday, April 19.

Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will explore Giovanni Bellini’s painting in the Frick Collection, “St. Francis in the Desert,” in a talk entitled “Bellini, St. Francis and the Religious Poesia” at 5 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

The preeminent Venetian painter of the late 15th and early 16th century, and teacher of both Titian and Giorgione, Giovanni Bellini is admired for both the technical brilliance and the beauty of his work. His painting of St. Francis of Assisi, which, among other things, marks the beginning of true landscape painting in Italy, shows a transcendent moment for Francis at his mountainside retreat at Monte La Verna. The background is bathed in sunlight, with a cooler light washing over St. Francis and his rocky setting. The saint seems to face the source of the bright light, mouth agape and arms outstretched, with the stigmata, or wounds of Christ’s Crucifixion, visible on his palms. (To see the painting in more detail and tour the Frick gallery where it is displayed, go to http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/bellini/google.htm.)

Despite generations of erudite scholarship and recent technical investigation of the panel, there is surprisingly little certainty about the scene it captures and its meaning. In his talk, Christiansen will review what we know of the painting's history and discuss the new kind of poetics of painting it proposes and the active viewer it requires.

Keith Christiansen joined the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an assistant curator of European paintings soon after earning his Ph.D. in Art History at Harvard in 1977. He steadily rose in the curatorial ranks to his current position as the John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings. He has taught Art History and Archeology at Columbia University and is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J.H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. “We are pleased to have someone of Mr. Christiansen’s caliber and experience as part of the series,” says Janson-La Palme. “He has risen to the top of his field at one of the great museums of the world, and we look forward to his insights into Bellini’s wonderful masterpiece.” For more information about the lecture series, please visit http://art.washcoll.edu/.

A reception sponsored by the College’s 1782 Society and the Department of Art and Art History will follow the lecture in the Underwood Lobby. Both the talk and the reception are free and open to the public.

CBS Correspondent Chip Reid to Discuss Interplay of Politics, Religion and Culture April 13

CHESTERTOWN, MD—During a 24-year career in network television news, journalist Chip Reid, now National Correspondent for CBS News, has covered everything from wars and wildfires to political campaigns and the White House. On Friday evening, April 13, he will visit Washington College to share what his reporting has taught him about how politics, religion and culture mix in American life.

Hosted by the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture, Reid will speak at 4:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. The event, titled “The Intersection of Politics, Religion and Culture: A Contemporary View,” is free and open to the public.

Reid has worked for three major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) and two local news stations in Washington, D.C. (WJLA and WTTG) since switching careers from law to TV news in 1988. While with NBC, he covered 9/11, the war in Iraq and the war on terror. He reported from Ground Zero and spent seven weeks embedded with a unit of U.S. Marines entering Baghdad. He also covered Congress, including the Clinton impeachment, and the Gore-Bush presidential contest.

Since joining CBS in 2007, he has reported on John McCain’s campaign and served as Chief White House Correspondent covering the Obama Administration. He was named National Correspondent in June 2011.

A native of Wilmington, Reid graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology from Vassar College in 1977. He earned a master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia before moving to Washington, D.C. to practice law. He started his broadcast career as a field producer for ABC News.